What Happens When YouTube Becomes AI-Tube

A recent news story that broke talked about YouTube using AI in order to edit videos (YouTube Shorts specifically) on their platform. This happens without an opt-in or opt-out policy and has been happening for probably a little longer than the article would suggest. This article will delve into the dangerous precedent set by this change and the reaction from online communities as well as creators who have noticed this happen to their videos.

Starting off I would like to give my position on the topic before we go any further. I think this is an abhorrent violation of the creative spirit. People put blood, sweat and often tears into their videos in order to make them perfect. If AI is just going to take over and “make them better” or more clickable or to generate more engagement then that just isn’t their vision is it? Soon we will have AI try to AI-correct videos generated by Artificial Intelligence video creation tools, which might’ve already happened based on reports. 

When Did This Forced Adaptation Of Artificiality Start?

Though we truly can’t know exactly when it started, reports started rolling in during June of this year. These talked about noticing small alterations in the way YouTube Shorts are presented, and sometimes pointing out that the entire video looked smeared in oil. Body parts look strange and smooth, and sometimes people’s faces were appearing wrong due to the unblurring effect. If June was the first proper time it was noticed, then my prediction is that it was probably tied to an update to Google’s AI models. 

However the real whistleblowing moment was when a creator called Rhett Shull released a video titled “YouTube Is Using AI To Alter Content (and not telling us)”. The video was published on the 14th of August and more reports have come out since from people who were unhappy with this change. You can also see this reflected in the comments of this particular video. A quote that resonated with me from Rhett’s video was: “The trust of my audience is the most important thing that I have as a YouTube creator. Whether or not you like my content or agree with what I have to say underneath all of that is this underlying foundation that you trust what I’m making and what I’m saying and what I’m doing is truly me.” 

One of the problems that a lot of people have with this particular change is that creators haven’t explicitly given permission for this to be done to their videos. There are “beta” programs you can opt-in to which people click on without knowing exactly what they will be. Consent is really important for things like this that are going to change your own videos. While the intention is to unblur and reduce the noise in videos, this is a precedent for more changes coming down the pipeline for forced AI use.

Community Reaction - First They Came For The Shorts…

To say the discovery of this was unpopular might be the understatement of the century. Firstly I’ll start off with some more positive receptions to the change; some people have said that it’s merely a cost-cutting measure, to host files at a lower size and then use machine learning to upscale them to save on server costs. Others have said that it’s not dissimilar from what phones do whenever you take an image since they smooth it out and make it look better. Some people went ahead and started calling the people against it, well, stupid because they’re comparing it to YouTube’s compression algorithm and saying that this is the same thing.

But naturally, the detractors were significantly larger in number. In the comments for all of the videos talking about this as well as all the reddit threads bringing it up, it is all negativity for the most part. Many are talking about this ruining the experience for them, citing that YouTube is taking the freedom of creators wanting to display the video how they want away. One comment on an LMG video stated that they process their videos to look like VHS but the upscaling makes it look less authentic.

There is also a sub-section of people that believe that this is the start of a move towards an AI-first YouTube where now real content and AI-created content will be indistinguishable. This is because the effects which smooth, unblur and reduce the noise will be applied to everything. Therefore it will make even human-made videos “look” like AI, which then in turn would mean that people raised on this new vision will only expect that from videos.

What Did YouTubers Say About Their Shorts Getting Extra Smooth In The Wash

So far, there haven’t been many big-name reactions. Rhett Shull blew the whistle, as I mentioned earlier, but the larger tech channels are only starting to weigh in. Linus Media Group (best known for Linus Tech Tips) featured Rhett’s video in one of their uploads. In it, they warned: “I think we can all agree that making things look more overprocessed and AI-generated is not good. And this seems over the line.” Their take echoed Rhett’s concerns, though they also took time to break down video processing for viewers with technical examples.

Now until we hear more from the larger creators, the smaller creators on communities like r/PartneredYouTube have mixed reactions. There the sentiment is actually more in favour of the change, probably one of the few cases where this is true, with a couple more voices. Here they are talking about it being an experiment and to let it sit, as eventually you might be able to opt-out of it. Other smaller creators had a more negative reaction similar to everything else seen online currently, I don’t see much point in repeating it as the talking points are pretty much universal.

YouTube: "Machine Learning Algorithms Totally Aren't AI guys"

For a platform that’s always been supposedly creator first this response seems extremely tone-deaf. While yes, it might not be GenAI because it’s not actually creating anything, it is altering the videos that are already published. I would actually argue that this is much worse. At least if they were trying to make videos in the style of the creators, then they would probably be very bad and noticeable. Most people that watch these machine-upscaled videos won’t have a clue as they will only be using YouTube Shorts as their short-form content. The only reason this even came to light was because creators showed the same video on YouTube and Instagram side by side, and the YouTube version looked noticeably altered.

Then the second part that needs to be addressed is the comparison to what modern smartphones do. While again, yes, smartphones do compress and process images and videos… you give them consent to do that when you take the picture! It’s not just gonna do it while you’re sitting on your phone and alter it like “Oh this could be a little sharper…”. The follow-up response wasn’t much better, they just said that they’re working on improving it and working on adding an opt-out to this function. The fact they didn’t even set it up with an opt-out built in is pretty telling in my opinion.

Why did YouTube do this? Well we didn’t really get a clear answer, but to me it would seem that it’s a cost-cutting measure like some reactions pointed out. Due to the excessive server and bandwidth costs with hosting so many billions of videos on their platform, any sort of way to reduce that will be celebrated. I do think the person who said that it’s to store smaller files and then process them using the AI was correct. Another factor is that sharper, more clickable and watchable videos will help engagement and keep people plugged into YouTube. This in turn means that YouTube would be able to generate more ad revenue and pay for those costs. We can’t know for sure but those answers in combination probably are as close to the truth as we’re gonna get.

It’s Hard To Wear My Shorts Down This Slippery Slope

That’s all it is really, a slippery slope down the death of creativity. Imagine the Mona Lisa after YouTube’s ‘machine learning algorithm’ gets its hands on it: oh her veil and hair could be shinier, maybe the hands could look a little thinner, maybe the background could use a bit of sharpening. But would that still be Da Vinci’s vision? This is how he wanted her remembered, changing that would be a crime against art.

Now I’m not saying that YouTube videos about going to the gas station and eating every item from it are on the same level of “art” as the Mona Lisa. However, even something so banal is a form of expression and creativity. It’s someone’s idea that comes to life in how they wanted to present it, and while currently it just tries to “improve” how it looks, what if in the future it tries to re-do parts of the video to be more appealing and click-worthy? I think we’re at the peak of the slope now and if we continue down it, there will be no way to distinguish reality from artificiality.